


Dry Shores

by EmpyrealElysium



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Break Up Talk, Coming of Age, Extended Metaphors, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27671009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmpyrealElysium/pseuds/EmpyrealElysium
Summary: Oikawa realizes that the earth's topography can not encompass what he feels-or what he thinks he feels-for you.
Relationships: Oikawa Tooru/Reader
Kudos: 18





	Dry Shores

**Author's Note:**

> I reposted this after revising the initial draft. The word count doubled ahhaa. Feedback would be highly appreciated.

“I like you.” 

The words taste foreign to Oikawa Tooru when he utters it first. If things have been in their usual order, the girl would have confessed first, and he would have either let them down, cushioning their fall with premeditated words of comfort, or in the rare instance that he harbored a mutual crush, accepted it with a charming smile. 

But now, the world beneath Oikawa’s feet has shifted, turned upside down, and toppled everything he worked for when the ball bounced off his arms and dropped on their court for the last time. Karasuno一those pesky crows and their pesky setter Kageyama Tobio, the little  _ brat genius _ 一has dashed his chances of ever playing with his team at Nationals, and prove that he’s worth something. 

Uncertainty accompanies Oikawa in his pursuit of his volleyball career. Playing among geniuses with the natural talent for the sport overshadows his ceaseless efforts to become the best player he can be; to defeat them one day, even if it means walking against the currents of his own insecurities, doubts, the reluctant acceptance of his inferiority against those born to play the sport, struggling everyday to maintain his footing and not get swept away. 

He feels the same tides of uncertainty lap up his chest as he stands in front of you, laying his heart bare for the first time since he can remember. Ironically, he thinks it’s what he loves about you. He can skip the chore of breaking himself down and laying his vulnerabilities bare when you just  _ know _ . You see through his pretty smiles and charming personality, and find the insecure boy with nothing struggling to have everything underneath as anything but a lesser being. 

Your wide stare overwhelms him, swirling with curiosity and other mysteries he can’t explain. They pin him right where he stands, vulnerable to your judgement. 

Oikawa feels like drowning in the next few moments, waiting for your answer. His hands clench at his sides, teeth dig against each other, and he watches the light on your hair flare like a burning hearth as the sun descends the horizon. 

“Oikawa,” you call, and you bite your lip, an action that usually spurs warmth in his chest, but with distress一and uncertainty一swimming in your eyes, ice cold dread pools in his heart instead. He feels it eclipse some of the loveーthe feelingsーhe harbors for you.

“I’m sorry,” you mutter, as soft as a wave bidding goodbye to the sands as it recedes into the ocean, “I can’t accept your feelings.”

“No…” He shakes his head, feeling the earth shifting again, the waters threatening to sweep him away. He calls for you, your name a lifeline he desperately clings to, afraid that he will slip away if he lets go, “Please, I-I can’t lose you too一”

He’s stuttering. Oikawa Tooru is stuttering because of a person he lovesーor he  _ thinks _ he loves一

“That’s why I can’t be with you.” 

And then, silence. A silence that burdens with the weight of truths buried in the ditches of his mind, now surging into the light with vengeance. Oikawa drowns in the tides that tear his chest asunder, and he can see you atop the waters—submerged yet afloat, staring down at him with those eyes. Those eyes that always know, eyes that know something that he doesn’t, and it frustrates him because he  _ knows _ —

Oikawa looks down at the dirt beneath his shoes, the asphalt you have walked on for three years of high school glowing like dying embers in the light of the sunset. You both stand at the intersection where you part ways to take your own paths home.

“Oikawa,” you call, sounding resolute, or maybe exhausted? He can’t tell, and he refuses to look up to know. 

You sigh. “Oikawa,” you begin again, “you will always chase volleyball. You know that.”

Another silence, one that underlies many things. A silence in the threshold of a door he let you rip open to expose his vulnerabilities. A silence that awaits the retaliation of words to protect what’s left of himself. He can taste the bitter words ready in his tongue. Your eyes never leave him, and Oikawa realizes in the silence that you’re thinking. You’re always thinking around him, which is why you always know what to say, what to do. You always think, and never will he know the wonders that whirl in that beautiful head of yours. 

You take his silence as an answer.

Oikawa remembers how much he despised your eyes when you first met. One glance, and you see the things that have long sunk inside him, despite the ugly layers of mold and the mud swallowing them into banks where regrets, insecurities and anger fester. Your first conversation, a chance encounter where he bumped into you and apologized as a nicety, has you telling him that his smile creeped you out. It may have been the light from the afternoon sun peering into the school hallways that day, or it may have been the flames in your eyes that burned through his facade at first sight, but he saw himself in them--confused, defensive, struggling to have everything. He thinks for a moment that he saw himself as you see him that day.

Yet Oikawa never has that leverage against you. He’s powerless against the ocean that stretches beyond and beneath the horizon, brimming with life, death, and secrets he can never comprehend. He thinks of diving in and exploring your mystery. But his path is on the land, and he can only overlook the beauty of your rippling currents as he passes by and dreams of drowning in you. When you’re out of sight, will he still see you on the road back? 

  
  


He doesn’t think he’ll ever know.

And Oikawa realizes that is as much as he’ll ever know about you.

The ocean is beautiful from afar. But up close, as the cold waters shock his skin and remind him of his own mortality, he realizes that the waves brewing in the distance are much bigger than he thinks. 

He remembers what you told him when you both went to the beach last summer to “hang out” despite Oikawa’s teasing, close to desperation, that it was a date. You told him that when the waves recede from the shore, it doesn’t mean that the tide is low. It only means that a tsunami is forming beyond the horizon. 

“I can't follow you wherever you're going. We want different things in life.” A pause. A purse of his lips as he realizes that he doesn’t know what you want to do after you graduate. A peace as the rumbles of the oncoming wave nears the shore.

“You’ll always chase after volleyball. You love it so much and you’ll love it more than anything.” He sees the wave now, approaching the shore. He knows. But it’s easy to forget that for a moment when he’s too lost in the reflection he sees in your eyes, too lost in the reprieve he feels in the silences between the two of you. Memories are fonder when there are gaps you can fill with sweet maybes. And you know, you always know, and he waits for the next words that are inevitable on your lips. 

“Even more than me.” 

Your eyes turn to the horizon.

“If you even do like me.”

For once, Oikawa feels clarity as the wave swallows him whole.

* * *

“I’ve made peace with that.” A deep sigh billows out of your chest, and your shoulders drop. “But if it’s any consolation, I do like you, Oikawa,” you admit. An explanation bubbles in your throat, but you swallow it down instead. Everything has been said.

Oikawa looks up to you now, and he clenches his fist to keep the warmth behind his eyes from spilling over. In the light of the sunset, your tired eyes sink into the shadow of your brow. The tip of your collar is upturned, and there’s a slight wrinkle on the sleeve of your uniform. Another sigh wisps out of your lips, a slit of blood at the bottom from where you bit off the skin. Have they always been chapped? You cross your arms and shift on your feet, and the movement allows him to see an albatross pin on your bag. 

You bite your lower lip, right on that red mark, as the pads of your fingers claw at your sleeves. Oikawa imagines the pain, itchy and addicting and frustrating all at once, but still a wound nonetheless. 

Then, you laugh, humorless and as dry and bare as the asphalt beneath your feet, miles away from oceans and rivers and the useless secrets they keep. 

“Besides, you barely even know me.”

He knows.

His eyes drop to the ground, letting the silence answer for him one last time. 


End file.
